


Finding Presents in the Past

by Dawnwind



Category: Starsky & Hutch
Genre: Gen, Hanukkah, h/c
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-05-27
Updated: 2011-05-27
Packaged: 2017-10-19 20:17:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,946
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/204799
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dawnwind/pseuds/Dawnwind
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Starsky celebrates Hanukkah after a stay in the hospital. Written for a challenge to come up with a new tag for Shootout</p>
            </blockquote>





	Finding Presents in the Past

When Hutch swung the door open, Starsky's first thought was a kind of deja-vu. How could a place look so completely the same even though seven days had passed since he'd been there? There was a timelessness to his own house that made him feel like an intruder in a museum. Nothing had moved from the places he'd put them when he'd run out, late for work on December 17th. The unopened package still sat on the table, the contents uninvestigated after a week. A box of candles lay on the table, but not one had ever made it into the simple candelabra he'd placed on the table just moments before leaving the house.

"I missed the whole thing," he said softly, walking stiffly over to the table to touch the candles. Dropping heavily into a wooden chair he tried to wrestle the box open one-handed.

"Starsk." Hutch dropped the accumulation of one week's stay in the hospital on the floor just inside the house, kicking the door shut behind him. "You need to get some rest. The doctor only discharged you on the promise that you'd stay in bed for the next few days and heal."

"It's the last day," Starsky said, managing to get one finger under the flap of the candle box and ripping the front completely off. "I gotta do this for my mom. I promised."

"What?" Hutch asked with a distinct effort.

"The menorah, Hutch." Starsky lifted up a candle, wincing with the effort to slot the first one into its proper place. "We were so busy goin' after Harry Sample last week, I totally forgot to get this out. She even called me to remind me . . ." The second candle was as much as his recently injured body was willing to do. Just raising up his right arm made the barely healed wound on his back scream for mercy and Starsky groaned, cradling his left arm against his chest.

"Can't this wait?"

"It's the last night and I never lit any of the candles." Starsky was tired. He was beyond tired and he hurt, but suddenly this seemed vitally important. He needed to say thank you.

"But it's already Christmas Eve." Hutch inserted the candles into their holders, surrendering to Starsky's whim.

"And it's still Chanukah," Starsky watched him, beginning to relax in his familiar surroundings where there were no hired gunmen, no mafiosos coming for dinner and no vino de casa. That last one was the only thing he would have welcomed into his home, but then, he was still on pain medication. "You ever believe in fate, Hutch?"

"Not very often." Hutch gave a derisive laugh. He picked up the ninth candle, placing it into the only empty space left. "I thought there were only eight days."

"That's the shamash, to light the others," Starsky said, rotating his neck to relieve the strain from the sling holding his left arm. He wanted to light the candles. That had always been his job when he was a kid, but with only one working hand, he couldn't strike a match. "You got a match?"

Flicking his lighter on the wick of the center candle, Hutch lit the slender taper and handed it to Starsky. "I wouldn't know what to do," he admitted.

"After all these years, I hardly do either." Starsky stood carefully, lighting the first candle on the right with the shamash, trying to dredge up some of the prayers learned in his childhood. "Baruch Atah Atonai, Elohenu . . . ." He lit the second one and passed the shamash back to Hutch. "I think I'm better off in English."

"I am, too." Hutch gave him a sweet smile, touching the flame to the next wick and finishing the row of candles with a deft hand.

"Thanks for getting us outta there in one piece," Starsky said without formality. He tipped his head, watching the smoke from the menorah coil lazily up to the ceiling. "Amen."

"Amen," Hutch echoed, blowing out the candle he still held. "That's beautiful, Starsk."

"I usta love to hear my mom tell us the story of the Maccabees holding out against the Syrians," Starsky said, closing his eyes, feeling the power of those people fighting for a cause they believed in. "There weren't very many of them, but they were strong and they liberated Jerusalem. Then when they went to light the Menorah, there was only enough oil for one day and it took eight days to make new oil. That one day's oil burned for eight days."

"A miracle."

"It's a celebration." Starsky wanted to lean against the chair, but the wound on his back wasn't ready for that kind of pressure. "What we need now is some potato latkes, and then we'll be all set."

"It's after six, Starsky, the delis are probably all closed, but I could try . . ." Hutch waved at the kitchen, apparently now getting in the holiday spirit. "If you had a recipe."

"I've got better than that." Starsky grinned. "Look in the freezer."

Hutch opened the upper door on the fridge, pretending to shiver from the icy draft coming out. "This ice cream must have come from the last ice age, Starsk." He dumped a half eaten quart covered entirely with a frosty layer of snow into the trash. "Ah ha, something that doesn't need to be chipped out of the tundra with an ice pick." Hutch held up a Tupperware container labeled latkes on the lid. "Your mother sent you a care package?"

"Special delivery." Starsky took in a deep breath, wincing at the pull from his stitches. "She does it every year. I just don't usually have a chance to go all out. So this year, she sent everything."

"The menorah, and the candles?" Hutch pried open the lid, carefully taking out the potato pancakes and placing them into the oven to defrost. He rummaged around in the kitchen getting out a skillet and oil.

"And this," Starsky touched the unopened box wrapped in brown paper and enough string to use for a clothes line, if the need arose. "She sent 'em all on different days, then would call me to make sure they came. Called me right before I left for work. Sometimes she forgets the time change."

"So, open it," Hutch encouraged, poking his head into the fridge.

By the light of the Menorah candles, Starsky stripped off the string, the recycled brown grocery bag turned into mailing wrapper and one-handed, pulled tape up off a flat cardboard box. Inside were photos, old-fashioned, black and white pictures from the beginning of the century. Stiffly smiling women and men dressed in their Sabbath finery, dark hair and sharp features marking them unerringly as Starsky ancestors. He shifted through the contents of the box, remembering a beloved uncle now dead or the story of how that aunt met that uncle.

"Oh." Starsky said softly, his breath catching in his throat. It had been a long day, his back hurt and he was tired, that was the problem, because he felt absurdly like crying. Must be the scent of the onions from the pancakes in the air. He could hear the latkes sizzling in a frying pan and Hutch humming a vaguely Christmassy tune.

Starsky pressed against his nose to wipe away the stray moisture, resting his aching left arm on the edge of the table in it's sling.

Selecting one photo at random, he held it up, watching the way the shadows slid across his father-as-a-child's face, emphasizing the years and the miles from where this had been taken. The small boy stood proudly in his sailor suit, knickers buttoned just below the knee, one hand on his mother's knee. She was a beautiful thing with dark, curly hair piled high on her head and definitely the same proud lift of her chin Starsky remembered. On the back was written 'Magda and Joseph, December 24, 1924, in Warsaw'.

Starsky sat, staring at the well-known and yet far too young faces of family, letting the events of the past week wash over him and drain away. It was over. He and Hutch had survived insurmountable odds to emerge triumphant — a very familiar theme for a Chanukah story.

"Hutch, what if we were meant to be there?" Starsky asked, sniffing at the good aromas coming from the kitchen. "Like fate."

"Starsky, you're repeating yourself," Hutch lifted the potato pancakes out of the sizzling oil with a spatula, flinching away from the spatter as he did so, and slid them onto plates. He added a dollop of this and that and carried both plates over to the table. "Nothing is pre-ordained."

"Maybe it is," Starsky picked up his fork awkwardly with his right hand, but that was not going to deter him from taking a bite of the heavenly concoction. The potatoes were fried to the perfect crispiness, and the smooth sour cream and sweet applesauce mingled on the tongue to perfection. "You found the toppings!" He speared another bite, swirling the morsel through white cream and chunky applesauce.

"The only two unopened containers on the top shelf of your refrigerator, right next to the mummified remains of an ancient pizza and two bottles of beer." Hutch ate his latke, making appreciative noises. "Your mom sent you a box of pictures? Who are they?"

"That's my dad," Starsky snickered at the outfit his four-year-old father wore. "And that's Grandmother Magda�who many, many years later, when I was nine, lived over an Italian restaurant."

"That's a coincidence." Hutch said, but Starsky could see that he looked a little spooked.

"We were in the right place, at the right time, you can't deny that."

"Yes, I can!" Hutch roared, stabbing his fork in the air, then lowered his voice with an apologetic cringe. "Starsky, there is no way I'll ever believe that you getting shot in the back was the right thing."

"Saved all those people, didn't it?" Starsky did lean back against the chair this time, feeling all the aches and pains overwhelming him. He'd overdone it, but the tasty treat — along with the judicious use of a painkiller, would help him sleep. And the comforting presence of the menorah, his mother's menorah, would keep away the dreams.

He watched the flames jump and dance on their tiny wax pedestals, seeing the shifting, fleeting lives of humanity reflected in each tiny fire. With the pinch of his right thumb and forefinger, he snuffed out the first one. "You did that, Hutch. Like one of those Maccabees, with fewer weapons, but a whole lot more smarts, you saved the people in that restaurant from a firefight between hired guns and the mob."

"We did," Hutch said simply, unable to refute Starsky's logic, and batted at Starsky's hand when he reached up to extinguish the second candle. "Don't keep doing that, or we're be back at the hospital treating you for third degree burns."

"Aw, c'mon, don't tell me you never did this!" Starsky grinned mischievously and licked his fingers before blotting out another flame. He held up his blackened thumb.

"We had a candle snuffer for that," Hutch said imperiously, but he followed Starsky's example and snuffed out the third one. "Ow! Who taught you to do this?"

"My grandmother."

"The one who lived over an Italian restaurant?"

"You're learning, Hutch." Starsky stifled a groan when he leaned forward again, his back reminding him that he'd been up for far too long. Time for bed. "Some things were just meant to be."

"Happy Chanukah, Starsk." Hutch said and blew out all the candles on the Menorah with a single puff.

"Merry Christmas, Hutch."

Fin


End file.
